Brit Army Lasses Preggers in Iraq!

Sort of a Fleet Street headline for this story from the Daily Star:

At least 133 Brit servicewomen have been sent home from Afghanistan and Iraq after getting pregnant.
The Daily Star Sunday has learned 102 of Our Girls returned early from Iraq between January 1, 2003 and February 28 of this year because they were expecting. And at least 31 female squaddies were fl own home from Afghanistan for the same reason.
Of those, 50 returned early from Iraq or Afghanistan between April 1, 2007 and February 28, 2009.
A total of 5,600 women have been sent to war so far and the Ministry of Defence admitted there may be even more cases which have not been recorded.

Shocker! Send women to war and they'll be women, not warriors. And lads will be lads, after all . . .

Earth to Obama: Ruh-roh

Obama tried to delay U.S. withdrawal from Iraq:

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.
The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem.
Instead, Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi told reporters that Obama told the Iraqis that they should not rush through what she termed a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of U.S. forces until after President Bush left office. In other words, the Iraqis should not negotiate an American troop withdrawal.

Look, if that's not a Logan Act violation, I don't know what is. And it's so cynical, it's breathtaking.

'Had we listened to Obama ...'

Jamie Kirchick in the Politico:

Had we listened to Obama back in January 2007, the effects of the surge would never have materialized, and we would not be in the place we are today, where talking about victory in Iraq no longer seems preposterous. So manifestly wrong was Obama about the surge that his spokesmen are saying he always believed it would reduce violence, and earlier this month his campaign removed negative references to it on his website.
We are incessantly told, without any real evidence other than a compromise bill here and there in the Illinois state Senate, that Obama is an incomparably thoughtful politician, the likes of which we have never seen before. . . .
To admit that his judgment was wanting on the subject of the surge would irreparably damage -- if not kill -- the Democratic narrative of the war.

What's really weird about this past week is that Obama has thrust the focus onto foreign affairs at a time that (a) polls indicate voters are most concerned about domestic economic policy, and (b) the success of the surge is taking the wind out of the sails of the anti-war issue.

We're kind of where we were in 1972 when George McGovern ran an anti-war campaign, only to discover that -- once Nixon started "Vietnamization" and ended the draft -- the peace movement has lost its oomph.

McCain attacks keep surging

Having launched an offensive, the McCain campaign continues its steady drumbeat of attacks against Obama for his opposition to the surge in Iraq. A press release from the campaign this morning notes that Obama will be interviewed tonight on NBC News and points out:

[W]hile Barack Obama was trying to score political points in the Democratic primaries by calling the surge a failure, NBC News was reporting the progress being made in Iraq because of the surge.

The McCain press office provides three video clips of Obama criticizing the surge on NBC. Jan. 10, 2007, Obama says the surge will make things worse in Iraq:



July 18, 2007, Obama says the surge hasn't worked:



Nov. 11, 2007, Obama says the surge is "potentially worsening" the situation in Iraq:



Obama may be able to defend, but he clearly cannot deny, his opposition to the surge.

Good news for troops in Iraq

The celebrity hooters are coming!

Heidi Montag says her late stepbrother -- who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan -- has inspired her to visit the Middle East to perform for U.S. troops.
"My brother was an airborne ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq," the Hills star tells Extra in a new interview. "It's very important to me and important to Spencer to support the troops and go over there."
Montag's stepbrother, Eric O'Hara, 24, who was a veteran of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, died in an accident in March at the Steamboat Springs, Colo., hotel where he worked.
While Montag and Pratt are eagerly planning their trip — they may be getting a little help with travel arrangements from friend Meghan McCain, the daughter of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

I'm sure the troops will stand up and salute -- she'll get a reception that makes Obamamania seem lame.

Obama: 'Don't ask me tough questions!'

AllahPundit catches Obama at his favorite game, trying to avoid giving a straight answer:

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?
A: No, because, keep in mind that…
Q: You wouldn't?
A: Keep in mind… These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that, what I'm absolutely convinced of, is that at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.

Obama refuses to defend his earlier outspoken opposition to the surge. Rather, he wants to debate "the view of the Bush administration at that time." In other words, "Never mind that I was wrong, in a way that brings into question my judgment of military affairs. This election is about giving the people a chance to vote against a third Bush term."

The Harvard-educated Obama has the quality of intellectuals that most annoys ordinary Americans: A preference for abstraction over reality, for words over action. His desire to "change the political debate" is more important to him than the obvious truth that, despite his opposition, the surge stabilized the situation in Iraq.

And yet liberals bash Bush because he has been reluctant to admit his mistakes . . .

The logic of war

In reading John McCain's op-ed column that was rejected by the New York Times, I was struck by this paragraph:

I am also dismayed that [Obama] never talks about winning the war -- only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.

That's the nub of it. It is one thing to oppose war before the shooting starts. Once the war begins, however, the only choices are victory or defeat -- glory or dishonor.

The possibility of defeat is among the reasons why war should be avoided if possible. I am reminded of Nicias, the Athenian general who argued against undertaking the fateful Sicilian expedition in the Pelopponesian War but who, once the decision was made to undertake the expedition, insisted that it be made with all available force. Athens could afford the expedition, but could not afford defeat.

John McCain has indicated his disdain of Bush's jocular "f--- Saddam, we're taking him out" attitude -- an attitude he says the president manifested a year before the invasion. But McCain has steadfastly insisted that, if we were going to fight in Iraq, we make the fight full-strength. Fight to win, or don't fight at all.

Obama considers defeat an acceptable outcome; McCain doesn't. This is the real difference.

'F--- Saddam. We're taking him out.'

March 2002 -- a full year before the invasion of Iraq -- John McCain and another senator are at the White House meeting with Condoleeza Rice:

Bush unexpectedly stuck his head in the door. "Are you all talking about Iraq?" the President asked, his voice tinged with schoolyard bravado. Before McCain and the others in the room could do more than nod, Bush waved his hand dismissively.
"F--- Saddam," he said. "We're taking him out." And then he left.

Among other things, this anecdote in Time (h/t: Hot Air) reminds me of the arguments I kept having with conservative friends in late 2002 and early '03. There was a lot of diplomatic back-and-forth with our "allies," and much debate then going on in Congress. My friends were taking all this seriously, as if it were still up in the air whether we would or would not invade Iraq.

"The decision has already been made," I insisted. The deployment of multiple Army divisions to the region, I said, was not merely a threatening gesture, but a "Guns of August" type omen. Nothing Saddam could do at that point -- and certainly no protest by Germany or France -- was going to prevent the execution of the invasion plan.

This story about Bush saying "F--- Saddam" in March 2002 also points to something else I've said all along: The decision to invade Iraq had very little to do with the arguments that were (publicly) made in favor of the invasion.

Recall that in the fall of 2002, the issue of war and peace appeared to hinge on WMD and Saddam's cooperation with Hans Blix and the U.N. weapons inspectors. But Bush had made up his mind to "take out" Saddam long before then, so that by March 2002, it was something he took for granted, bluntly dismissing any alternative. Yet in March 2002, the showdown over WMD and weapons inspections hadn't even really begun, much less reached any kind of crisis.

This is why all that Plamegate nonsense about uranium ore was so irrelevant. Saddam's weapons weren't the reason for the invasion, but merely a politically convenient pretext, since the Clinton administration had already made Saddam's WMD the basis for previous military action. If Saddam's weapons were justification for the 1998 air strikes -- as all Democrats agreed -- then how could they argue against an invasion to eliminate the threat?

The decision to invade Iraq was made early, that decision was not based on the issues that were debated in late 2002 and '03, and once Bush made his decision, he never reconsidered it. The pre-war debate was thus moot, pointless, irrelevant, a charade, a sham.

Obama defies the Wayback Machine

Team Obama tries to hide the evidence of St. Hopey's erstwhile opposition to the surge in Iraq:

Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.
The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence. "The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.
The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004. (Emphasis added.)

This childish and impotent gesture won't work, as anyone familiar with Internet technology could tell you. The old stuff can still be found through Google caches, and No Quarter has some of the Messiah's former prophecies of doom in Iraq. Don Surber:

Finally, we know what Obama means by change.

Yeah, Don, but what the hell is the Hope for?

UPDATE: Scott Johnson alludes to Orwell:

Who is heading up the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth over at the Obama campaign?

This constant under-the-bus stuff -- now Obama's thrown his own former anti-war self under the bus -- indeed begins to resemble the facile rewriting of history that Orwell's 1984 portrayed as inherent to totalitarianism, e.g., Stalin's henchmen airbrushing Trotsky from old photos, the coverup of the Comintern's role in the failure of the anti-fascist opposition in Spain, et cetera.

Ed Morrisey questions the timing:

The move comes as John McCain repeatedly points out that Obama opposed the surge in January 2007 and said it would make the situation worse. . . .
The scrubbing . . . may just be a way to prep for his upcoming trip to Iraq. If Obama appeared before the troops who defeated the terrorists in western Iraq, he may not get the reception he wants if his website kept discounting their hard work in the face of a despicable enemy.

Yeah, you can see Obama (who, unlike John Kerry, never wore the uniform) going to Iraq and telling the troops: "Congratulations on your complete failure in this futile doomed quagmire!"

Radical Islamic feminism

It's illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, but apparently the Blessed Prophet says blowing yourself to smithereens in pursuit of jihad is an equal-opportunity gig:

A female suicide bomber has killed nine people and wounded 12 others in an attack on an Iraqi market, police said. . . .
The use of women to carry out suicide bombings has become a regular tactic of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The US military says there have been more than 20 suicide bombings by women this year in Iraq.
A BBC reporter in Baquba says women and children were among the casualties in Monday's attack.

This kind of reminds me of a joke:

Q: If male suicide bombers get 72 virgins, what do the women get?
A: Shut up, you Zionist infidel dog!

I didn't say it was a funny joke.

Planning failure in Iraq

The New York Times reports:

The story of the American occupation of Iraq has been the subject of numerous ooks, studies and memoirs. But now the Army has waded into the highly charged debate with its own nearly 700-page account: "On Point II: Transition to the New ampaign." . . .
The report focuses on the 18 months after President Bush’s May 2003 announcement that major combat operations in Iraq were over. . . .
A big problem, the study says, was the lack of detailed plans before the war for the postwar phase, a deficiency that reflected the general optimism in the White House and in the Pentagon, led by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, about Iraq’s future, and an assumption that civilian agencies would assume much of the burden.
"I can remember asking the question during our war gaming and the development of our plan, 'O.K., we are in Baghdad, what next?' No real good answers came forth," Col. Thomas G. Torrance, the commander of the Third Infantry Division's artillery, told Army historians.

I'm not sure whether the "general optimism in the White House" phrase is part of the Army account or the reporter's own interpolation. Nevertheless, the Army seems to acknowledge the folly of de-Baathification:

Paul Bremer III . . . issued decrees to disband the Iraqi Army and ban thousands of former Baath Party members from working for the government, orders that the study asserts caught American field commanders "off guard" and, in their view, "created a pool of disaffected and unemployed Sunni Arabs" that the insurgency could draw on.

Students of history will recall that Patton, during the occupation of German, got in trouble for opposing de-Nazification, which he saw as removing from office skilled and respected civilian administrators merely because of their political affiliation. It made no sense, Patton said, to remove the head of a hospital or a water works merely because -- perhaps as a condition of keeping his job under the totalitarian regime -- he joined the ruling party.

Bremer's insistence on de-Baathification --what can only be called a radical reconstruction policy in Iraq -- was an error that was obvious to many at the time. Unfortunately, those who saw Bremer's policy as an error didn't have the influence to stop it.

Botched raid in Iraq

Somebody's in big trouble for this one:

Senior Iraqi government officials said Saturday that a U.S. Special Forces counterterrorism unit conducted the raid that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, touching off a high-stakes diplomatic crisis between the United States and Iraq. . . .
Ali Abdulhussein Razak al Maliki, who was killed in the raid, was related to the prime minister and had close ties to his personal security detail, according to authorities in Karbala. . . .
Iraqi officials in Karbala said the operation began at dawn Friday with U.S. aircraft delivering dozens of American troops to the rural Shiite Muslim town of Janaja, which is populated mostly by members of the Maliki tribe.
Authorities said the raid apparently was aimed at capturing what the military calls a "high-value target," often a reference to the leader of a militant cell.
Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, told journalists Friday that the Americans had acted on faulty intelligence.

Certainly, the death of Maliki's relative is a diplomatic disaster. Be assured that somewhere, some U.S. colonel or brigadier general is watching his career come to a screeching halt as a result of this blunder.

Sadr capitulates?

This could be very good news:

Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. . . .
The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. . . .
It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who'd been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr's forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.

It's very difficult to judge the military and political situation in Baghdad from half a world away based on news reports. But the Mookster is clearly a stooge for the Iranian mullahcrats and has been a bad actor since Day One, and if this signals the beginning of the end of his mischief, then it's a good thing.

On the other hand, I was disturbed by something that Gabriel Malor (a recent law school grad) posted at Ace of Spades HQ. Gabriel was slamming a lefty blogger who did an anti-American rant based on a news story about an Iraqi army order for civilians to evacuate Sadr City. That rant was the basis for Gabriel's argument that concluded:

This is why the Left must lose in November. I'm not asking you to vote for John McCain. I'm asking you to vote against having a Leftist in the White House.

Hold the phone there a minute, son. The study of Latin and logic used to be a prerequisite to law school. Can you say, "non sequitur"?

Are we really sure that the next Democratic president will base his (or her) foreign policy on the views expressed in that lefty blogger's rant? Granted, every Democratic president since at least LBJ has made a disastrous botch of foreign policy, but to draw a logical line from Point A (the lefty blogger's rant) to Point B (Obama's foreign policy) is a bit hasty. It's an error akin to blaming Republicans for every crackpot utterance of Pat Robertson.

Furthermore, Gabriel, leaving aside the mala fides of the lefty blogger (hey, I can sling me some Latin when I need to), do you mean to suggest that the wisdom of the evacuation order is not subject to debate? Let's quote that news story:

Iraqi security forces, after more than of 40 days of intense fighting, on Thursday told residents to evacuate their homes in the northeast Shiite slum of Sadr City and to move to temporary shelters on two soccer fields. . . .
Two soccer fields in east and northeast Baghdad are expected to receive some 16,000 evacuees from the southeast portion of the city where the fighting has been most intense.

Holy smokes! Think about going to a concert or sporting event with a crowd of 16,000. Now, imagine trying to house that entire crowd in tents in a space the size of two soccer fields. Food, water, sanitation -- we're talking a logistical nightmare, just to achieve a minimal level of existence. That might be preferable to leaving the civilians in their homes while the fighting rages, but it's still a drastic measure, and one that would nearly triple the current number of Sadr City refugees.

Somehow, I couldn't help but think of the famous 1864 Hood-Sherman correspondence regarding the latter's order for the evacuation of Atlanta. Most would say that Sherman got the better of the argument, but it certainly didn't endear him to the civilian populace. Here we are, five years into the Iraq war, and if we're still waiting to be greeted as liberators, it seems we'll be waiting a damned long time.

Mass evacuations? A six-week fight for a slum? An Iraqi army that can barely contend with a two-bit punk like Mookie?

Gabriel, if this is your best argument why Americans should stampede to the polls in November to pull the lever for John McCain, you've got problems much worse than the ranting of one left-wing blogger.

UPDATE: An imbed's account of a visit to Sadr City. And Jules Crittenden is cynical about the prospects that Sadr will place nice now.

Defeat? Not an option

Historian Andrew Roberts visited DC this week:

"Defeat cannot be, and must not be, allowed to be an option in Iraq," said Mr. Roberts, in town to promote the U.S. release of his 700-page book, "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900." ...
Mr. Roberts described the current battle against terrorism as "a world-historical struggle." And, while noting that he is himself a supporter of Britain's Tory opposition, Mr. Roberts praised the "moral courage" of Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mr. Roberts has returned to England, but I'll be interviewing him in the near future.